Erschienen in:Prepared for the 2010 American Political Science Conference, Washington, D.C
Umfang:
1 Online-Ressource (40 p)
Sprache:
Englisch
DOI:
10.2139/ssrn.1667130
Identifikator:
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments August 31, 2010 erstellt
Beschreibung:
In recent years pirate attacks have been increasing in both cost and number. Despite much speculation, there are few empirically tested theories of why we see this variation in attacks. Using an original data-set of over three thousand piracy attacks over the last decade, as well as micro-level data on Somalia, we argue that some of this variation can be attributed to the economic opportunity costs of conducting piracy. By taking advantage of the effect of global commodity data on labor prices, we demonstrate that changes in the prices of labor and capital intensive commodities significantly affect the rate of pirate attacks. These findings are robust to instrumenting for commodity pricing using regional precipitation levels